ATLANTA — The cheers started early and only got louder as the captains walked toward midfield prior to kickoff at the Peach Bowl.

Edd-ie! Ed-die! Ed-die!

It didn’t matter he wasn’t dressed and couldn’t play in the game. Eddie Jackson was and remains an integral part of this Alabama football team — even after breaking his leg in October, which ended the collegiate career of the senior safety.

He was, certainly, during his playing days, a vocal leader in all the best ways. The heart of the defense — ask anyone. And since he’s been sidelined, he’s remained a big talker, but this time with a different perspective.

"When he went down, it seemed like he started talking more and more to us from sidelines during practice,” redshirt sophomore defensive back Marlon Humphrey said. “While I think him going down is definitely a bad thing, but as it turned out, he made it into a good thing, being a coach from the sidelines, especially with DBs.

“He’d be right there in the DB huddle.”

Alabama defensive back Eddie Jackson was on the sidelines cheering on the Crimson Tide in the Peach Bowl.(Photo: Jason Getz, USA TODAY Sports)

Jackson wrote a letter to his teammates, published on The Players’ Tribune, that explained how important it is for him to be the leader his teammates voted for, and also how hard it’s been to watch and not play in games. He’s also reminded his teammates just about every day to savor the moment; you never know when your final snap will come.

"When I found out my season was over, I couldn’t stop crying,” Jackson wrote. “What made me the most upset was knowing that I’d have to miss out on all the fun we were going to have. Playing good football is hard work. It takes hours and hours of sweat and preparation. You have to push yourself to a level you didn’t think was possible. But ultimately it’s all worth it, because as everyone in this program knows, playing good football is — more than anything else — really, really fun.”

The parts that lead up to the fun are not always that. Every Alabama player learns something from the Alabama players ahead of him. For Jackson, he learned quite a bit from a recent Heisman Trophy finalist.

"I’ll never forget lining up against Amari Cooper one day in practice when I was a freshman,” Jackson wrote. "He was just destroying me — making me look silly on every single play. I was embarrassed. At some point I looked over at Coach Saban, begging for some relief. Coach looked back at me and yelled, 'Eddie, I’m not taking him off you, so you better get used to it!'

"We ran another play. I got roasted again. And then, as we were walking back to the line, Coop said to me, 'Every play you go up against me, you’re getting better. I’m gonna have you live next year, son!’ He was right. If I could cover Coop in practice, there was no other player in the nation who was going to intimidate me. That’s the advantage we have over everybody else. We earn all our experience the hard way on the practice field in Tuscaloosa against future early-round draft picks. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was a privilege to get beat by guys like that. That’s how I learned.”

Alabama defensive back Eddie Jackson roams the sidelines with a crutch.(Photo: John David Mercer, USA TODAY Sports)

That part of Jackson’s piece is what resonated most with his coach. After Alabama’s 24-7 throttling of Washington on Saturday, he brought it up in his postgame news conference.

"When you're in that huddle, there ain't nobody special,” Saban said. "Everybody’s together. Everybody has respect for each other, and everybody appreciates the job that everybody else does. And you can go a long way in doing a lot of things, and you may never find that. You may never find that. But you find it when you play football and you play together as a team.

"That article epitomized the defensive chemistry that we have and how important those guys are to each other and how they play well together.”

Sounds about right for the nation’s best and most stifling defense — already strong, already quick, already powerful. But it’s also a group filled with guys who have taught each other to be better and to be together.

So they played for Jackson Saturday. And they’ll play for him one more time, Monday night against Clemson, too.

They hope to give him one more piece of hardware.

“He means a lot to us,” senior linebacker Ryan Anderson said, “and it means a lot to us to go out and win for him."